Fighting Fit: Health, Medicine and War in the Twentieth Century

By Kevin Brown

The twentieth century saw two world wars and many other conflicts characterised by technological change and severity of casualties. Medicine has adapted quickly to deal with such challenges and new medical innovations in the military field have had advantages in civil medicine. There has thus been interplay between war and medicine that has not only been confined to the armed forces and military medicine, but which has impacted on health and medicine for us all. These themes will be examined from the Boer War to the dawn of a new century, and a 'war against terror;' the experiences of individuals as doctors, nurses and patients, are highlighted, with personal, sometimes graphic, first-hand accounts bringing home the realities of medical treatment in wartime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Sep 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9780752486673

Kevin Brown

Kevin Brown is a professor at Lee University. He has published articles on Kurt Vonnegut, Doris Lessing, Tony Earley and Ralph Ellison, in addition to a critical study of authors who attempt to retell the gospel stories: They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. In addition, he has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press), and a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again.

Reviews for Fighting Fit

[manipledmutineer · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An interesting, if unavoidably brief, survey of the interplay between war and medicine between the Boer War and Vietnam. An informative read.